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How Long Should Your Social-Media Post Be?

My colleague Lisa Meloncon, who teaches an infographics course in our professional writing program, recently sent me the link to an awesome blog post. It was published by the social-media scheduling and analytics firm Buffer, and it contains a cool infographic designed by SumAll, another social-media analytics firm. The post tells you not only how long the parts of different electronic messages should be but also why, in terms of user data.

Did you know, for example, that . . .

The ideal length for a tweet is 71-100 characters?

The average time that podcast listeners stay connected is 22 minutes? And that this time is shorter for students?

The optimal length for the title of a blog post is 6 words?

A LinkedIn post should be about 25 words?

Click here to check out this post and share it with your students. And then discuss with them when it might be appropriate to stray from these guidelines, depending on audience and purpose.

You can also use Buffer’s post as the basis of an assignment–for example, having students boil down the data for a short email/memo report, or create their own infographics based on these or other data.